FAQ's on my eyelet share.....

I've had a few recurring questions about my eyelet share. I thought I'd do a FAQ post.

1. Do you need the full payment up front, and if so, why? Yes, I need the full payment as quickly as possible. The reason why is that I have to pay 1/2 of the total amount up front, just to get the manufacturer to start making the eyelets. Remember this is a custom order and if I flake on them, they're stuck with them. We're talking about thousands of $$. I need 200 participants to fill the share. At $40 each, that's $8,000. You can see why it would be hard for me to cover the entire cost myself, even 1/2 is a lot of money.
2. Why will it take 2 months to receive my eyelets? The eyelets are being manufactured overseas. The manufacturer has quoted the wholesaler (and hence me) 35 days to manufacture this many colors. Then we have to allow time for the eyelets to be shipped from overseas, then to the wholesaler, then to me. On top of that, I'll be getting bags of 10,000 eyelets and I have to count them into sets of 50. When I did my other eyelet share, it took me about 30 minutes to count 5,000 eyelets using my counting scale. My engineering hubby has come up with a more efficient way to count them, so I'm hoping each set of 10,000 won't take more than 40 minutes. That's still 40 minutes for each of 60 colors. That's a total of 2,400 minutes, or 40 hours.
   
3. What colors are you using for the "in" colors? I'm using the current "in" colors because I sent these cardstock samples in to the manufacturer over a month ago. I wouldn't be able to get accurate 2007-2008 "in" colors until I can get my hands on some cardstock. That would put the eyelet delivery sometime in September. I don't want to make people wait that long.
4. Will you do the new "in" colors? Yes. When the new "in" colors are made available, I will send in samples and have them made also. At that time, I will be offering an additional share of the "in" colors, metallics, and neutrals as a supplement to the regular share. I would expect this to be ready to ship in September.
5. Are these aluminum eyelets? Yes. They are the nice, soft ones, easy to set, just like SU. They're not the hard brass ones like Making Memories. If you purchased a previous eyelet share from me, in the non-custom colors, they will be exactly the same because they are made by the same manufacturer.
6. When will the eyelets be ordered? I have just given the go-ahead (May 25th) to the manufacturer. I expect to receive the eyelets in the early part of July. I expect it will take me at least a week to count them, and then a couple of days to address and ship them. I will update my blog every step of the way when there are new developments.
   

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer them here.